Monday, November 10, 2008

The Death Cult and its Strange Nasolabial Gods (11.22.11)

High seriousness about [Wodehouse] brings to mind poor Professor Scully. This professor's attempt, in 1902, to describe a smile scientifically was quoted by Richard Usborne in his fine book Wodehouse at Work. Scully doggedly dissected "the drawing back and slight lifting of the corners of the mouth, which partially uncover the teeth, the curving of the naso-labial furrows".... Such an approach is not actively harmful, but it suffers from naso-labianism -- leaving the mystery of Wodehouse's genius intact.--Code of the Woosters (preface)

We're still in the middle of that old card, Death. UF properly relates the grim ferryman to mechanism and materialism, which are "not at all the realm of answers, but rather the graveyard for real questions." In other words, to embrace scientistic reductionism as a metaphysic (as opposed to a method) is to live as zombie. You're not really alive. You're just undead.

For example, just ask a typical victim of reductionosis -- as Julie attempted to do -- what a smile is. A purely horizontal person could in good faith respond that it involves "the contraction of muscles in the region of the mouth and cheeks, and this latter through electrical impulses transmitted through the nerves from the centre called the 'brain.'" But this would be like trying to understand a telephone conversation by analyzing the electrical impulses that pass within the wires. The most complete analysis will necessarily be completely inadequate. Such an approach hardly explains the smile, but simply provides the occasion for a metasmile.

The same is obviously true of the mind/brain relationship. Smiling is a manifestation of joy, or humor, or bemusement, which "set in motion both the muscles of the mouth and the electrical impulses of the nerves." As I mentioned somewhere in the book, every reductionistic explanation harbors a cognitively pathological dualism that results in one side of the dualism spilling over into the other side.

In other words, like a psychotic patient, the materialist's explanation is always put forth by that which is denied in the explanation. Making a question go away is not the same as having answered it. As UF points out, the question remains, but it is simply shifted from the conscious to the unconscious mind.

If you ever want to know why so called "rational" people believe in such weird things -- global warming, Obama worship, the designated hitter -- this is why. They descend into a kind of chaotic and disorganized form of unconscious thinking, because you can no more make the unconscious go away than you can make the sympathetic nervous system go away. All you can do is discipline and channel it, the same way you create electricity from a wild river.

You don't make the Colorado River go away. You build a damn, which is to say, a boundary condition, which harnesses the "lower" in order to allow for an emergent "higher." If I were a reductionist, perhaps I might say that this post is being typed on a computer, which is plugged into a socket, which is powered by Hoover Dam, which is just a big wall with holes in it, which is why this post is ultimately all wet.

Now, one of my main beefs with psychoanalysis is that it does a fine job of describing the lower vertical, but at the same time, tries to reduce the upper vertical to the lower. Only a handful of psychoanalysts don't do this, Bion being among them. With him, you retain all of the vast explanatory power of psychoanalysis without infringing upon the upper vertical, the domain of religion, mysticism, gnosis and magic.

As I mentioned above, the materialistic thinker always ends up unwittingly mired in a dark swamp of unconscious thinking. One of the purposes of religion is to provide a luminous framework for fruitfully thinking about -- or within -- the upper vertical. And in fact, it also does a fine job of structuring the lower vertical -- or at least it used to.

I'm thinking of all the extraordinary wisdom embodied, say, in the Talmud or in classical elucidations of the cardinal virtues and deadly sins. A while back we did a series on the esoteric meaning of the Ten Commandments. Same idea. Just as there is such a thing as a healthy body -- obviously -- there is also such a thing as a healthy soul and spirit. But if you deny the soul and spirit up front, then if you remain spiritually healthy, it will be by accident, not design.

So many decent morons of the left hypocritically retain "religious habits" with no religious belief. For example, they insist that marriage is sacred -- so sacred, in fact, that we should extend it to people for whom it is strictly impossible to be married, thereby undermining its very definition (which again, is only in the vertical; to reduce marriage to some sort of purely horizontal arrangement is to destroy it -- as well as the sacred itself).

It's analogous to saying, "eating salad is healthy. So healthy, in fact, that I will place my cat on a strict diet of fresh vegetables." Good logic. Wrong species. Which pretty much sums up the left. It reminds me of a great line from the Gary Shandling show, when his bitter agent says "our job would be so easy if it weren't for fucking talent." Leftism would be so great if if weren't for fucking humans! Humans are the problem. So let's give them more power over us!

Most people don't have the time or ability to be metaphysicians, which is one of the practical blessings of religion. If you eliminate religion, you'll just usher in bad metaphysics.

This is the true meaning of the culture war. The United States used to be one culture with two political parties. The two parties basically represented different groups of interests with the same underlying culture. But beginning in the 1960s, the Democrat party started to represent a new culture, which is not American, for American culture is rooted in Judeo-Christian principles, among other things. All culture is rooted in the cult, which is the "interior glue" that holds a people together and makes them "brothers."

Which leads us to ask: what is the interior glue that holds the nasolabians of the left together? What is the common interest, say, of the corrupt labor leader, the abortion activist, the dysfunctional Teachers' Union, and the homosexual agenda? What is their common cult? Who is the god to whom they all make their sacrifice?

I'll let you answer that question. UF makes the point that our vertical freedom is a miracle, by which he means something that transcends any purely mechanistic explanation. You might say that everything that isn't either chaotic or mechanical is a miracle, i.e., a vertical intervention.

And because of our freedom, we can see that the higher illumines the lower, not vice versa. In other words, in the absence of freedom, we could not know truth, because truth would be reduced to a kind of mechanical operation that excludes us, precisely. So, to say "truth" is to say "freedom" is to say "spirit" is to say "miracle":

"The minimum is only the reduced maximum and it is through the maximum that one understands the minimum, and not vice versa. It is consciousness which renders the mechanical and unconscious comprehensible, the latter being only consciousness reduced to a minimum, not vice versa. It is man who is the key to the biological evolution of Nature and not the primitive organic cell."

The point is, it is the most complete and final form that "illumines and explains the previous stages." Which is why man explains evolution, not vice versa. But what explains Man? Or is that too obvious?

Since you remain dead, then yes, I suppose I am still blogging your dead horse. But what goes for horses doesn't necessarily apply to their asses. After all, you keep coming back for another flogging, so that's an example of unconscious hope.

>>I'm curious as to why you linger on (or return cyclically to)this particular line of thought? Your readership consists of people who "buy it" already<<

Sure, there comes a tipping point by which people cross over into gnosis, but . . . people "buy it" in different degrees, different levels of comprehension. Bob's posts are meta-expansive enough so that with further readings on the same theme, we can glean more and more from them.

You know, most scriptures return again and again to one "particular line of thought", just like a symphony returns again and again to a simple theme. That theme, however, is continually restated in different ways. If you're not alive to the variations, you're missing the music.

This is one of your best posts on the problems that ensue from a lack of belief in God.

But--

Aren't you flogging a dead horse here?

You've proven your point many times over in the past.

I'm curious as to why you linger on (or return cyclically to)this particular line of thought?

Your readership consists of people who "buy it" already.

The persistence and vehemence of your attack on "the Godless heathen" must be driven by some kind of agenda but I cannot figure out what it could be, considering your audience.

You need to get in line and get with the program. Forget those new people who may come here and see clearly what they have only intuiited in the past.I'll start you off with a chant which will quell your inquisitive nature and usher you in to the new millenium. It'll be like like a warm opiate enveloping your soul.Here goes.

"Which leads us to ask: what is the interior glue that holds the nasolabians of the left together? What is the common interest, say, of the corrupt labor leader, the abortion activist, the dysfunctional Teachers' Union, and the homosexual agenda? What is their common cult? Who is the god to whom they all make their sacrifice?"

That is the most striking thing about seeing their 'coalitions' together, that there is no visible common interest by way of their agenda's - the uniting thread isn't found in what you see, but what they won't see.

"And because of our freedom, we can see that the higher illumines the lower, not vice versa. In other words, in the absence of freedom, we could not know truth, because truth would be reduced to a kind of mechanical operation that excludes us, precisely. So, to say "truth" is to say "freedom" is to say "spirit" is to say "miracle":"

It really is as simple as that. And few things are more annoying than trying to deny what is so simple to see... no wonder the asses bray.

"Since you remain dead, then yes, I suppose I am still blogging your dead horse. But what goes for horses doesn't necessarily apply to their asses."

The same is obviously true of the mind/brain relationship. Smiling is a manifestation of joy, or humor, or bemusement, which "set in motion both the muscles of the mouth and the electrical impulses of the nerves."

"Which leads us to ask: what is the interior glue that holds the nasolabians of the left together? What is the common interest, say, of the corrupt labor leader, the abortion activist, the dysfunctional Teachers' Union, and the homosexual agenda? What is their common cult? Who is the god to whom they all make their sacrifice?"

That's a great question, which just means that I don't have a clue...this is like a koan; I'm afraid any 'answer' I attempt will just get me beaten with a stick, or some other zen master response to the inept student.

Hm. Culture appears to be an underlying theme to my ramblings today. Starting here, then on to here, where the author states:

"...this is America, remember: we’re a country of the imagination, a living state of mind. We’re not connected to one another by bloodlines or any depth of native memory. We’re the descendants of an idea that every generation has to learn to hold in its collective consciousness. More than in any other country, it matters in America who we think we are and what we believe we’re doing.

Our academies, the news media that train in the academies, and the entertainment industry that’s informed by the news media have become, to my thinking, a sort of alternative state of the imagination, a kingdom of lies founded in the muck of hysterical guilt, historical distortion, and philosophical solipsism. In their fantastic and labyrinthine narrative, our fascist foes are Nemesis, the emanation of our own sins, and therefore our military can only be the mad or foolish servants of evil."

and in between, this snippet in a later chapter of MOTT (The Star):

"One is noble (in the sense of 'nobility of the heart') in so far as one is a poet at heart. And since every human is in principle a priest, a nobleman and a worker at one and the same time, let us not smother the nobility within us by an overestimation of practical aims or by a preoccupation with our salvation, but on the contrary let us ennoble our work and our religion by bringing in the breath of poetic inspiration.

...

The poet is the point at which the separated waters meet and where the flow of hope and that of continuity converge."

Anon 8:44 said...The persistence and vehemence of your attack on "the Godless heathen" must be driven by some kind of agenda but I cannot figure out what it could be, considering your audience.

Agenda? Simple - to exercise salt and light. What feeds the soul and lights the way for those inhabited by vertical truth is at the same time a toxin to slugs and moths.

Matt 5:13-16 - You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

It's blindness that causes you to see Bob's "agenda" as a vehement attack on Godless heathen. It's nothing of the sort; instead the light and salt both heal and maim, and are meant to. I daresay that every 'raccoon' that frequents this place was once as blind and some like me can still pry eyes open only at a glacial pace. So the light often singes my earthy wings and the salt kills my slugs, but leaves behind a healthy remnant, a luminous scaffold to build upon.

“what is the interior glue that holds the nasolabians of the left together?”

CITY LIFE!

Well, for a while there it was that Bush pissed off all the wrong people: academia, media, attorneyia, intelligentsia... the guys who’re best at digging for dirt and making said dirt public but according to 2008 county by county red/blue election maps it’s back to:

Before I read Bob's great post today, here's something to commemorate the birthday of the US Marine Corps:HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARINES!!!OOHRAH!

By Andrew Klavan11/10/08

Andrew in AfghanistanFrom "Five Days at the End of The World" in City Journal, Autumn 2008

I was standing at a military checkpoint outside Ali al-Saleem Air Base, about an hour from Kuwait City. I was hunkered in a three-walled cinderblock shelter with a canvas fluttering overhead. It was nearly 110 degrees. A dust storm was turning the daylight yellow-brown. I had sand in my teeth. I had grit in my eyelids. I was waiting for some Army media guy to cut my orders so I could get on base and catch a military transport to Afghanistan.

And I felt downcast, I confess. I felt bitter and a little self-righteous, too. I kept thinking how, right that minute, there was probably some other screenwriter sitting poolside at the Skybar in LA, pitching his new antiwar story to an eager producer: “Then, see, the GIs devour the Iraqi child’s body to hide the evidence, and we finally understand the dehumanizing consequences of Bush’s foreign policy. Forget box office! Think: prestige!”

I was on my way to Afghanistan because of the movies. Really. Movies like Brian De Palma’s Redacted; In the Valley of Elah, written by Paul Haggis; and Lions for Lambs, starring Robert Redford—movies about the War on Terror in which our soldiers are portrayed as rapists or post-traumatic murderers or naive fools roped in by warmongering neocons. I went because of the movies that didn’t get made, too—the movies that never get made—movies in which the heroic U.S. military defends our nation’s principles of liberty against a low, violent, Islamofascist miscreed. I wrote about these films in City Journal (see “The Lost Art of War,” Winter 2008) and in the Los Angeles Times. I attacked Hollywood for wallowing in outmoded European ideologies and for resurrecting imagery left over from movies about Vietnam.

Then, after a while, I started to ask myself, “Hey, wait a minute. How do you know what a movie about the War on Terror should look like? What would your movie look like, big mouth? What kind of story would you tell?”

Which leads us to ask: what is the interior glue that holds the nasolabians of the left together? What is the common interest, say, of the corrupt labor leader, the abortion activist, the dysfunctional Teachers' Union, and the homosexual agenda?

I think you answered this yourself the other day- wait a minute...Here, from last Thursday:

Another danger of politics is that it tends to organize people around their hates. As a result, their center of gravity becomes that which they hate.

I was trying to put my finger on the source of some deja-vu that's been floating through my general disappointment with the outcome of the election. Lileks' piece in today's screedblog helped to zero it in. I was in my second year of teaching when the LA teachers' union called a strike against the district. I had been following the issue pretty closely, and came to the conclusion that the union leader, and his threatened strike were bullshit. So I had to decide- should I go along with the union members, who were the great majority, and, incidently, included most of my friends at work, or should I go along with the few others on the faculty who likewise disagreed with the union?You know just how popular you can become on a job by bucking the union? I do. I crossed their picket lines every day, and along with the handful of other who also stayed, kept the school running as best we could.The union won, and when they returned to work it was with great joy, and celebration- and, from some, bitter shunning for those of us who didn't go out on strike.So that's sorta' what it feels like now- those first few days when the strike was over, and I was getting used to the idea that I had bought myself a ticket to the pariah club.I've been reading a lot of post election post mortem stuff, and one of the themes that recurs is that the Republican party needs to drop the anti-abortion, creationists, religious right, and get with the program on the environment, global warming, gay marriage...In other words, adopt the values of the Lizardoid right. And they're probably correct if they want the Republican party to attract young voters. That brings us back to the Alignment of Sides. Those who are trying to keep an O centered life and worldview are necessarily going to be fractured out into the smallest of minorities- a remnant as it were. And now as I think of it, Jesus didn't promise his followers that belief in him would get them in with the in crowd. Quite the opposite, if I remember right.

"For example, just ask a typical victim of reductionosis -- as Julie attempted to do -- what a smile is."

Another thing about smiles is the eyes.Someone can smile exactly like they do when they are joyful (many politicians do this) but if you are close enough the eyes will tell you if that person is truly joyful.Heck, you can even sense it.

That's just many of the reasons that Obama, Biden or Pelosi creep me out whereas Sarah Palin is genuine, no put on.

This is somewhat OT, but perhaps this explains why Ombama is more comfortable with a teleprompter, while Palin is more comfortable without one.He is uncomfortable being himself, while Sarah is not.

JWM-Well said. People like Queeg fail to see that it isn't either or for most people. Hell, even most lizardoids don't (yet) agree thatsocial conservatives (who are usually fiscal and national security conservatives too) are to "blame" for the lost election.

Probably no one thing is to blame, but the MSM would be first on my list, followed by the economy tanking, bailouts, perhaps a fear of bein' called racist, in McCain's view.

Afterall, he was much harder on Romney than he was on Obama.Come to thnk of it, seems fiscal responsibility, or lack thereof by many in the GOP was also a big factor.

I don't see where social conservatives really played a big part in this election. Both candidates were asked just once about abortion, during the debates, and no one cornered Obama about his stance on abortion IRT his record.

We saw what happened with gay marriage, really a seperate issue from the Presidential election, and there wasn't much else mentioned, except for school vouchers by McCain, and he didn't really bring it up a lot.

But you're right, the suckular moderates, RINOS, and the elitist pundits do wanna eject the socons, and, not surprisingly, they hate Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal.

IMO if a Republican has to vote like a Democrat on most issues to get elected, I don't see where that helps the party of Conservatives. We saw how reaching across the aisle helped Democrats but where did that help Republicans?

I respect John McCain for his service but I wasn't too impressed with his Conservatism. Except for foreign policy, there wasn't a whole lot seperating him from Obama.

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Location: Floating in His Cloud-Hidden Bobservatory, Inside the Centers for Spiritual Disease Control and Pretension, Tonga

Who?! spirals down the celestial firepole on wings of slack, seizes the wheel of the cosmic bus, and embarks upin a bewilderness adventure of higher nondoodling? Who, haloed be his gnome, loiters on the threshold of the transdimensional doorway, looking for handouts from Petey? Who, with his doppelgägster and testy snideprick, Cousin Dupree, wields the pliers and blowtorch of fine insultainment for the ridicure of assouls? Who is the gentleman loaffeur who yoinks the sword from the stoned philosopher and shoves it in the breadbasket of metaphysical ignorance and tenure? Whose New Testavus for the Restavus blows the locked doors of the empyrean off their rusty old hinges and sheds a beam of intense darkness on the world enigma? Who is the Biggest Fakir of the Vertical Church of God Knows What, channeling the roaring torrent of 〇 into the feeble stream of cyberspace? Who is the masked pandit who lobs the first water balloon out the motel window at the annual Raccoon convention? Shut your mouth! But I'm talkin' about bʘb! Then we can dig it!